Please join us at the Coleman Center for the Arts (CCA) outside on Avenue A on Saturday, August 22nd from 10 AM to 12 PM for the Harvest Celebration of Motherpatch, a new public art project by the Fallen Fruit.

Activities will include free watermelons for all (while supplies last,) a watermelon race (with prizes!!), and music!! Please also join us in sharing memories and advice you got from your mother, as we honor mothers with these delicious seeded watermelons!

This event is free and open to the public! All are welcome! Free watermelons! Free food! Free fun! Come and join us and remember to “Spit your seeds!”

Motherpatch is the largest public watermelon patch in the world, containing over 30 global varieties of watermelons. The project is Fallen Fruit’s collaboration with the CCA and the people of Sumter County that began in 2012, and has unfolded through ongoing conversation, creation and collaboration.

This event is made possible by funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Visual Artists Network/National Performance Network, ArtPlace America, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Daniel Foundation of Alabama and the generous contributions of our individual sponsors.

JOIN US! for a Public Fruit Jam
Sunday, August 16, 11am – 2pm

One Colorado Courtyard – 41 Hugus Alley, Pasadena CA 626.564.1066

*This fruit-filled event is supported in part by Whole Foods Market

Join us for a fun and friendly day of making jam and new pals! Fallen Fruit’s Public Fruit Jam is a wonderful social and community-building event that’s perfect for kids, adults, families and even first dates.

Folks are invited to drop by the courtyard anytime between 11am – 2pm for the Fruit Jam. Everyone is invited to contribute home-grown or picked public fruit to the cause.

Selecting fruit goodies from the communal fruit table, guests will join Jam Teams of 3 to 5 people. (New friends!) Your team’s jam ingredients can be anything you bring along or score at the fruit table. Fallen Fruit encourages experimental jams, such as basil guava or lemon pepper jelly. You can even add a kick of jalapeno or bite with some fresh ginger. Almost all fruits can be jammed, even bananas – if you dare!

Each jam session runs approximately 45 minutes from cutting to preserving. Fallen Fruit staffers will be on hand to help out. In the end, you will have jam to keep, swap and contribute to the tasting table where you can savor the fruits of your labors. And who knows – you may also leave with a new BFF or adorable meet-cute story!

We are grateful to Whole Foods Market for supporting this event (and local farmers!).

Fallen Fruit invite you to experience your City as a fruitful place, to collectively re-imagine the function of public participation and urban space, and to explore the meaning of community through creating and sharing new and abundant resources. Fruit Trees! Share your fruit! Change the world! Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work. Fallen Fruit began by mapping fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles. The collaboration has expanded to include serialized public projects and site-specific installations and happenings in various cities around the world.

About One Colorado:

One Colorado is a collection of 17 historic buildings housing a curated mix of nationally acclaimed retailers and designers, unique local merchants, inventive restaurants and a boutique cinema. A full city block located between Colorado, Union, Delacey and Fair Oaks, One Colorado is the retail centerpiece of Old Pasadena and favorite casual gathering place for the greater community, with public events hosted year-round in its central courtyard.

Power Of People, Power Of Place

-Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young)

We find meaning in the things we take with us. When we move to another apartment, city, state, country, or continent, we bring objects with us; letters, books, photographs, works of art, heirlooms, tchotchkes and seemingly random things to remind us of who we are as a culture, a family, and as an individual.   In time, when these objects are left behind and rediscovered – they can they tell intimate stories about people and place.  Perhaps if we let go of all of these familiar things, we would lose our identity and instead merge with the existing culture of the land. -Fallen Fruit

LOS ANGELES-BASED COLLECTIVE FALLEN FRUIT EXPLORES OMAHA HISTORY AT  BEMIS CENTER

July 12, 2015, Omaha, NE — Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts presents Power of People, Power of Place, an exhibition project with Los Angeles–based art collaborative Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young).  On view August 6 to October 10, an opening reception will be held on Thursday, August 6 from 7pm to 9pm. Prior to the opening reception, Fallen Fruit will participate in Bemis Center’s monthly Art Talk program where they will discuss their research and installation process.

Power of People, Power of Place is the latest in Fallen Fruit’s ongoing series of projects that use fruit as a material to investigate culture and explore social engagement. The concept for this project was inspired by a part of the Great Plains Black History Museum collection that is being temporarily stored on the fourth floor of Bemis Center. During a research trip to Omaha in April of 2015, Fallen Fruit began to mine this collection. “As we opened boxes, some of them molded from years of dampness, the objects began to construct a complex picture about the things we leave behind,” said Fallen Fruit. “In time, the objects that once held meaning to us are rediscovered by others, telling them intimate stories about people and place.”

Continuing their research, Fallen Fruit visited other collections and archives in Omaha, including the Joslyn Museum, El Museo Latino, The Schrager Collection, and Omaha Public Library. Burns and Young have borrowed a range of objects from these and other Omaha collections and archives and arranged them into an exhibition that creates an installation artwork that becomes a portrait of the city of Omaha.

Fallen Fruit’s eclectic mix of borrowed books, letters, tchotchkes, domestic objects, and works of art (including pieces from Bemis Center’s own collection of artworks by past artists-in-residence) is assembled against the backdrop of their signature fruit themed wallpaper. For each exhibition project, Burns and Young design a custom wallpaper featuring fruit(s) specific to the location. Here, the artists take the apple as their focus, probing its rich symbolism and regional provenance, dating back to the Oregon Trail. “In the scope of our work, we have discovered that culture as well as fruit moves around the world with people,” said the artists. “Inspired by the AppleJack Festival we learned that apples were planted during western expansion because they are easy to store in winter and grow naturally all across the United States without much care.”

Items from the Great Plains Black History Museum- photograph by Fallen Fruit

Burns and Young draw on an excerpt from the January 1877 issue of Nebraska Farmer:

“Now, in comparing Nebraska apples with the products of other states, their superiority was evident in at least three particulars. First, their flavor was superior. Apples from regions that were comparatively insipid, when grown in Nebraska, were found to be finely flavored. This was the case with all the samples tested. Second, the color was superior. This was observed by everyone who visited the Nebraska department, and every one who had an eye for the beautiful had a word of praise for these fine apples. Third, the Nebraska apples were exceptionally free from parasitic fungous growths. All the apples from other states that I examined, including those from Canada, were more or less affected by fungi.”

To complement the exhibition Bemis Center has partnered with Joslyn’s Kent Bellows Mentoring Program to realize Urban Fruit Trails, Fallen Fruit’s decentralized public planting project that includes sites in various cities around the world. Kent Bellows students, who represent various Omaha high schools and zip codes, will plant apple trees throughout the city, in effect creating “a walkable network of fruit trails” that can be shared and enjoyed by anyone. “We hope these youth develop a long-term relationship to art in their city by virtue of seeing their participation reflected in the landscape for years to come,” says Nicole J. Caruth, Bemis Center’s new Artistic Director for Exhibitions and Public Engagement.

Caruth counts community building as another goal of the project. “As a recent transplant to Omaha I’m struck by the segregation here,” she said. “Urban Fruit Trails emphasizes sharing and connecting rather than divisions, and it’s a wonderful example of the role that contemporary artists can play in breaking down barriers, or at least in facilitating a shift in how we think about boundaries.”

Burns and Young will work with Kent Bellows Studio students to plant trees on the Bemis grounds in August. The students will complete the plantings in October 2015, in conjunction with a special Bemis Center Open House/Open Studios event, and the organization’s first ever themed residency on the future food production and consumption.

from the Great Plains Black History Museum- photograph by Fallen Fruit

About the Artists

Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young. Since 2013, David Burns and Austin Young have continued the collaborative work.

Fallen Fruit began in Los Angeles with creating maps of public fruit: the fruit trees growing on or over public property. Fallen Fruit uses cartography and geography as an indexical platform to generate serialized and site-specific works of art that often embrace public participation. The work of Fallen Fruit includes photographic portraits, experimental documentary videos, public art installations, and curatorial projects. Using fruit as a method of reframing the familiar, Fallen Fruit investigates urban space, ideas of neighborhood, and new forms of citizenship. From protests to proposals for new urban green space, Fallen Fruit’s work aims to reconfigure the relationship of sharing and explore understandings of public and private, as well as real world and real time. They consider fruit to be many things; it’s a subject and object at the same time it is aesthetic. Fruit often triggers a childhood memory; it’s emotional and familiar. Everyone is an expert on the flavor of a banana. Much of this work is linked to ideas of place and family, and much of these works echo a sense of connectedness with something very primal—our capacity to share with others. Fallen Fruit uses fruit as a common denominator to change the way you see the world.

Power of People, Power of Place and Urban Fruit Trails are presented in part by generous support from Lincoln Financial Foundation.

About Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts

The mission of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts is to provide residency opportunities to artists from around the world, so that they may develop new ideas, expand their practice and engage the community. Bemis Center has been recognized as one of the “Top 10 residencies around the globe” by ArtInfo, and Jane Alexander, the former head of the National Endowment for the Arts, has called the Bemis Center “one of the great treasures of its kind in the country.”

Bemis Online

Website: http://www.bemiscenter.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bemiscenter
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bemiscenter
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/bemiscenter

Fallen Fruit Online

Website: https://fallenfruit.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fallenfruit
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/fallenfruit
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/fallen_fruit

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
724 South 12th Street
Omaha, NE 68102
12th and Leavenworth
Admission and Parking: FREE
Phone: 402.341.7130
Fax: 402.341.9791
[email protected]
Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

¡Estas Como Mango! is an exhibition of contemporary art and public practice by the Los Angeles-based artist collective Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young). ¡Estas Como Mango! is their first solo project in Mexico.The exhibition is presented as a series of projects that together form a critical body of contemporary artworks that explore the relationship of local culture and tourist culture to the geographical area of Puerto Vallarta. ¡Estas Como Mango! is focused upon two aspects of Puerto Vallarta history: first is the notion of communal land and the privatization and commercialization of these communal lands; second is these ideas of use of land in relation to tourist culture.
¡Estas Como Mango! is a collection of site-specific art works created during a residency with OPC, including a Puerto Vallarta-themed fruit wall paper that is the background of the gallery exhibition; a limited-edition magazine with artworks made by local Puerto Vallarta community members; and the planting of 19 trees around OIas Altas creating an Urban Fruit Trail.   Additional works of art explore aesthetics that are specific to Puerto Vallarta and are relational to the themes common within this exhibition.The works of art that Fallen Fruit creates respond to people and place and use local fruit as a connector. In the case of Puerto Vallarta, Fallen Fruit discovered that the mango is paramount to local culture. Mangos were imported to this tropical beach town and form part of its foundation in terms of urban planning, infrastructure, and culture.
OPC and Fallen Fruit would like to thank the Barlow Family for the generous use of the building; we would also like to thank William Hobi, Catherine Oppio, Mexlend, and the many supporters of the Kickstarer campaign who made the ¡Estas como mango! exhibition possible. We would also like to acknowledge Bob Price and the Vallarta Botanical Gardens for the generous donation of the fruit trees.

Here are some of our favorite projects from 2014:

SKIRBALL CULTURAL CENTER: Fallen Fruit of Love
curated by Lindsey Lehtinen
The residency project for the Skirball Cultural Center focused on Jewish Heritage and in the archives of the institution we discovered a 17th Century Katubah (marriage contract). This historic document was different in that it combined the doctrine of marriage with illustrations of biblical scenes, astrology and a pomegranate. Fallen Fruit created a custom designed Pomegranate wallpaper and invited the public to collaborate on a new commitment document and exhibition. Drawing on submissions of portraits of people with someone they love, Fallen Fruit of the Skirball assembled images that span a lifetime to examine the often complex expressions of love. This exhibition examines the symbolic and narrative moments in everyday life, from friendships to marriage, as well as to nuanced social messages. It includes a Skirball commissioned piece from Fallen Fruit called Love Score, as well as custom-designed Pomegranate wallpaper.

PHOTO ALBUM
Skirball Post

FALLEN FRUIT: Public Fruit Tree Adoptions
Fallen Fruit distributes free bare-root fruit trees in a variety of urban settings. This year the trees were donated by Skirball Cultural Center and One Colorado. We ask that the fruit trees are planted in public space or on the periphery of private property next to a sidewalk or a road, in order to create new kinds of communal life based on generosity and sharing. Each recipient signs an adoption form promising to care for the tree – initiating a relationship with it. Eventually the trees will become part of a network of Urban Fruit Trails on the Endless Orchard.
Skirball Cultural Center
One Colorado

PELICAN BOMB: The Fruit Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree
(commissioned artwork for Prospect 3+)
Part of the Foodways Exhibition curated by Pelican Bomb
The Fruit Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree. An installation of of Peach Wallpaper and installation comprised of public fruit portraits in found frames, historic photographs and selected paintings and sculptures from historic archives of Atlanta; including Hammond’s House, The Souls Grown Deep Foundation, The History Center, The Wren’s Nest and others. All of the works collectively explore the relationship of people and place through the cycles of modern life that span images and works of art from the past 4 generations of Atlantans. Originally created for Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and curated by Stuart Horodner.
Photos from the exhibition

FALLEN FRUIT: Urban Fruit Trails
A Public Art project with Heart Of Los Angeles (HOLA)
Through a grant supporting innovative community focused art projects awarded by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in collaboration with the Los Angeles State Historic Park and HOLA Youth, the Urban Fruit Trails is a ground-breaking public art project designed to provide several often overlooked urban communities with public walking trails connected by fruit trees that will be sustained, nurtured and harvested by the public. This is the pilot for our upcoming Creative Capital awarded Endless Orchard project.

FALLEN FRUIT: Public Fruit Jam
Park to Playa Trail with MRCA, The Coleman Center in Alabama and One Colorado in Old Pasedena.
Fallen Fruit invites the public to bring homegrown or street-picked fruit and collaborate with us in making a collective fruit jams. Working without recipes, we ask people to sit with others they do not already know and negotiate what kind of jam to make: if I have lemons and you have figs, we’d make lemon fig jam (with lavender). Each jam is a social experiment. This year we brought them to public spaces and in the past we have held them at galleries or museums, this event forefronts the social and public nature of Fallen Fruit’s work, and we consider it a collaboration with the public as well as each other.
Park to Playa at Kenneth Hahn Park
One Colorado in Old Pasedena
Coleman Center, York Alabama

FALLEN FRUIT: Lemonade Stand
(commissioned artwork for Food For Thought)
“Lemonade Stand” – Fallen Fruit , 2014, David Burns and Austin Young a group portrait of Greensboro as Lemons. part of the exhibition Food For Thought. In exchange for a cold glass of lemonade, participants are asked to create self-portraits using black ink markers on lemons and to share stories of sadness and disappointment, or happiness and positive self-reflection. With curator Xandra Eden for the show Food For Thought at the Wheatherspoon Art Museum, we installed the Lemon Selfie’s in vintage frames on top of our Lemon Wallpaper for the exhibition. Our favorite new project, we did 6 ‘Lemonade Stand’s’ this year!
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC
Park to Playa – Reuben Ingold Park
Food For thought
Riverside Art Museum
Park to Playa -Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area–
Fallen Fruit of the Skirball
METRO Art Tour – Union Station

THE HAMMER MUSEUM: Fruitique!
As part of the LA2050 project ArtsRestoreLA, Fallen Fruit created a pop-up retail store based upon Fallen Fruit commissioned projects. The project space called “Fruitique!” is a retail art installation where anyone can buy any thing in the installation. The curated space was themed around fruit as a subject and symbol and includes original works by 50 artists from Los Angeles and abroad. The Fruitque! was reviewed by The Los Angeles Times, The LA Weekly, Forbes, and more.
the Fruitique is online!

QUEENSLAND GALLERY OF MODERN ART: Pineapple Express
(commissioned artwork for Harvest Exhibition)
Curated by Ellie Buttrose as a commissioned work for the HARVEST exhibition Fallen Fruit created a body of new works that focused on the history of Brisbane, Australia. Pineapple became the theme of the projects, as we learned that pineapple plantations are what founded that region of Australia about 100 years ago and introduced canned fruit to the world.

photos from GOMA.

GULF COAST: Fruit Metaphors, Objects and Histories
Legier Biederman wrote a terrific text piece about recent Fallen Fruit projects. Focusing on The Hammer project called Fruitique! and also The Fruit Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree for Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and Pelican Bomb for Prospect 3+. The layout is stunning! The writing is on point! In fact, there are even rumors that a book filled with similar pieces of work might be published next year. Although the book is still in the early stages, Biederman will definitely have to research how to market a book like this one at some point during the creative process. A book of this kind will undoubtedly receive heavy promotion in art galleries and at exhibitions so we cannot wait to see what the future holds for this upcoming piece of work. Like their local fruit cartographies, much of Fallen Fruit’s work examines issues of urban space and community and incites public participation, as in their public fruit jams or lemonade stand at the 2013 Athens Biennale. They are also known for their photographic portraits, experimental documentary videos, and curatorial work. In these diverse projects, fruit serves as a filter to examine distinct places, official and unofficial collections, archives and histories, as well as issues of representation and ownership.
view the magazine here.

Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work. By re-imagining public space, we aim to make fresh fruit available to everyone, everywhere.

December 18th in Old Pasadena at One Colorado

We’re giving away the gift that keeps on giving – a citrus tree compliments of Fallen Fruit and One Colorado! The artist collaborative Fallen Fruit (David Burns & Austin Young) invites the public to adopt a citrus tree and plant it in a public space or alongside private property to create new kinds of community based on generosity and sharing. It makes you feel good, it’s good for the planet, it’s free and it saves Santa a trip.

Each participant is asked to sign an adoption form promising to care for the tree—initiating a relationship with it. We ask recipients to plant them in public space or along the borders of private property near sidewalks where the fruits will be shared and enjoyed by the community. There will be over 50 citrus trees carefully selected for event. One tree per family. Fruit trees should be planted immediately with the understanding that they require extra water and care for three years. Fallen Fruit will provide planting instructions and caretaking tips.

RSVP to info @ fallenfruit.org by 12/17. Trees are first-come, first-served; RSVPs are given priority 6p – 7p; open to the public 7p – 8p.
Location:
One Colorado Courtyard, 41 Hugus Alley, Pasadena, California

Fruit Friends!

We have Fallen Fruit prints, gift items, and fruit art by our community of incredible artists!
our online store is HERE.

ARTISTS:
Jessicka Addams
Mark Allen
Miles Conrad
Zoe Crosher
David P. Earle
Fab Hatter
Fallen Fruit
Bettina Hubby
Virginia Katz
Julie Lequin
Kristi Lippire
Mara Lonner
Hilary McClean
Ranu Mukherjee
Michelle Muldrow
Susan Robb
Margie Schnibbe
Nina Salerno
Holly Topping
Barry Pett
Matt Wardell
Susan Weber
Dawn Whitmore
Bruce Yonemotp
Jenny Yurshansky
Carrie Yury
Cake and Eat It

With Love and Fruit,

Austin and David

The Stocker Trail will see a transformation when the southeast corner of 5-points becomes a parking lot and public fruit orchard to serve Angelenos at the trail head to the Park to Playa Stocker Trail. Fallen Fruit is creating a Public Fruit Orchard with a variety of fruit trees. The County of Los Angeles is working with Fallen Fruit to host several Fallen Fruit public art engagements leading up to the grand opening of the parking lot and orchard in 2015.

– Baldwin Hills Regional Conservation Authority (BHRCA) website
– Baldwin Hills Conservancy (BHC) website

Fallen Fruit is excited to announce we have been commissioned to make new work by Caldera Arts with funds from Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Award. Culminating in the fall of 2015, the residency project for Caldera focuses on the history of emigration in the United States, and explores concepts rooted in civic enterprise and the “underbelly” of a modern society. Emigration is very different today compared to what it used to be. Aeroplanes make flying from one coast to the next quick and easy, whilst removal companies and businesses like Cars Arrive Auto Relocation make moving your things and vehicles no hassle at all. But this is nothing like it used to be, and that is what this project will explore. Working with the support of several institutions such as The Portland Art Museum, Portland City Archives and in the Oregon Historical archives this series of projects explore the foundation ideas by which Portland became one of the most important cities on the west coast of North America. The art works will engage residents of Portland and Caldera artists, we will create a series of art works about the apple, people, and place. photo: Apples in Snow, Fallen Fruit, 2014, 30″ x 30″

Caldera Arts
twitter: calderaarts

October 25, 2014 – January 25, 2015
Exhibition hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 11 AM – 5 PM
Opening reception: Sunday, October 26, 2 – 5 PM

Pelican Bomb is pleased to present FOODWAYS, an exhibition of contemporary artist practices that uses food as a lens to examine the preservation culture. On view at 725 Howard Avenue, it is housed in the future home of the New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute. The exhibition coincides with Prospect.3, as part of the international art biennial’s P3+ satellite program.

FOODWAYS artists: Artemis Antippas, Chris Chambers, Clare Crespo, Denny Culbert, Roger Cain, Vanessa Centeno, Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young), Tina Girouard, Harriet Hoover and Early Smith, Rush Jagoe, Jenny LeBlanc, Michi Meko

Thank you Ana Walker Skillman, Kim Dennis, Karen Tauches, Hammonds House, Wren’s Nest, the Aishman family, Larry Anderson, and the people of Atlanta for contributing works from your private collections.